Ordinary Heroes (27 page)

"The infantry's thin," he said. "We'll go right past them. The Panzer Lehr are roaming out there somewhere, but even McAuliffe thinks it's a solid plan," he said, referring to the commander of the mist who was directing the defense of Bastogne. "Even if the Lehr show up, we can fall back. And if we make it through, our chances of success are very high."

"Trains and ammunition," I said. "You seem to have a motif, Major."

"Old dog, old tricks," he answered. "It's damn boring to be a specialist. I never wanted to specialize in anything when I was a boy. But then I fell in love with the railroad."

I asked if he was the kind who ran model locomotives around a track decorated with miniature trees and stations.

"Never had patience for that. I was somewhat frenetic as a child. I suppose you can still see that. No, trains for me came at a later point. I left home for a spell when I was seventeen. Hopped a freight car. First taste of freedom I'd had in my life was when that car went hurtling out of Poughkeepsie. I decided at that moment that the railroad was the greatest of mankind's inventions. I loved being around trains. When I went to my mother's people in Paris after I dropped out of college, that was the work I sought. Started as a porter. Ended up as an engineer. The idea that I was a common workingman appalled my father, but it delighted me."

"I don't think I've heard you mention your parents before, Major."

"No accident in that, Dubin." He nipped at his flask again and looked at the candles. "My father's a professor of Romance languages at Vassar College. Met my mother when he was at the Sorbonne. Very distinguished fellow, my father. And the meanest man walking God's green earth. I agree with him about everything. Politics. Music. I don't like his attire, I suppose, I don't like his hats. But it goes to show you beliefs aren't everything. He's a complete son of a bitch."

"Hard on you?"

"Very. And harder on my mother. She couldn't ge
t a
way by hopping a train. So she blew her head off with his shotgun when I was sixteen."

As the wind came up outside, the wooden doors knocked and the candles guttered, but he didn't take his gaze from the corner. I expressed my sympathies.

"Well," he said. "It was hard, of course. Horrible. But it wasn't a picnic before then. My mother was always in bed, an impossibly beautiful woman, but utterly morose. I can barely remember her features because I rarely saw her anywhere but a dark room." He drank and looked at the wall. "These aren't stories I often tell, Dubin."

I could understand that. But I recognized Martin's instinct always was to master the moment however he could. His. charm had been undermined by his lies. So now he would prey on my sympathies. Or parade out Teedle's perversions.

"I think I should come along on this operation with you tonight, Major." I had been considering that for a while. Across the entryway, Biddy could not contain himself.

"Jesus Christ crucified," he moaned. I found a pebble on the floor and tossed it at him, then repeated my request of Martin.

"Afraid I'll run away, Dubin?"

"That would not be without precedent, Major."

"Well, right now you have the Germans to ease your mind. Every road has been cut. And the snow is high. And I've got a team to bring back."

I said I still wanted to come.

"Don't be an ass, Dubin. You won't be there for the mission. You'll be there to keep an eye on me. Which means you'll be a danger to both of us. And damn certain to get in the way."

"We didn't get in the way at the salt mine."

"At the salt mine, Dubin, you stayed in one place.

This is a mobile operation. In armored vehicles o
n w
hich you've never been trained."

"I'll speak to Algar."

"It's not Algar's choice. It's mine. And I don't want you there."

The chance that Algar would overrule Martin was minimal, but given the situation I needed to try. I asked if Martin was willing to drive me back to Algar's headquarters so I could make my case to the Lieutenant Colonel. He wound his head disbelievingly, but smiled brightly at my doggedness, as usual.

"I have to get ready, Dubin, but I'll drop you there. Come along."

I told Biddy to stay and sleep. He seemed unconvinced.

"He's got a tommy gun with him, Sergeant," said Martin. "I think he'll have a fair chance against me." Martin called Gideon "Bruiser" when he gestured goodbye.

As soon as we were under way in his jeep, Martin said, "Aren't you going to ask me about Gita?"

hook a second. "I hope she's well."

"As do I."

"I understand she's near Houffalize."

"You won't find her if you look there, Dubin." Martin turned from the road with a tart, narrow look and we stared at each other. It was the first instant of actual hardness between us, undeflected by irony. He wanted me to ask where she was, and I wouldn't give him the pleasure. Even so, this friction reminded me yet again what a terrible mistake I'd made with her.

"If you have a complaint with me, as far as Mademoiselle Lodz is concerned, Major, feel free to lodge it."

"No complaints," he said quickly. "She wouldn't stand for it. Her life is her own. Always has been and always will be." This was a disciplined answer, like a soldier taking orders. "She's in Luxembourg. At least I hope she is. Roder. Overlooking the German border. We both sent reports to Middleton that the Germans were massing tanks, but nobody wanted to hear that. God bless the United States Army." He tossed his head bitterly, as he pulled the vehicle in front of the barn where Biddy and I had been with Algar a few hours earlier. When Martin's hand came forward, I lifted my own to shake, but instead he pointed at my side.

"I wouldn't mind having use of that tommy gun, Dubin. We don't have anything like that around. I
t m
ight come in handy and you have my word it will be returned. I'll swap you my MI for a few hours."

I looked at the submachine gun. I was glad Bidwell wasn't here, so I didn't have to hear the sounds he would make at the idea of giving Martin anything.

"Will you promise to surrender yourself to me, Major, when we're capable of moving out?"

Martin laughed. "Oh, Dubin," he said. In the darkness, he looked out to the snow. "Yes, I'll surrender myself. On the condition that you reach OSS personally before turning me over to Teedle."

We shook on that and I handed him the gun and the one ammo box I had with me.

"You'll have it back in a few hours," Martin promised before he drove off.

He was barely out of sight when the sentry outside the barn told me that Algar had gone up to the staging area to go over the maps one last time with Martin and his team. He said that Martin and Algar had set that meeting only half an hour ago when Martin first stopped here. I stood there in the wind. I would never be sharp enough to deal with Martin. I was not even angry at myself. It was simply the nature of things.

I considered walking back to Hemroulle, but I ha
d a
faint hope Algar might return before Martin's tea
m s
et off. There was a hay locker attached to the barn, a platformed area raised so that the fodder could be tossed in from the back of a cart or truck through an opening outside. The sentry told me troops had slept in there the last two nights. He promised to rouse me as soon as Algar came back.

Only a little hay remained in the height of winter, but its sweet smell lingered. My predecessors had swept up the remnants and mounded them into a couple of beds and I lay down on one and fell soundly asleep. My dreams seemed rough and desperate, the kind that make you cry out in the night, but I stayed for many hours in that world, rather than this besieged circle in Belgium.

My name roused me. Hamza Algar, looking weary and nibbling at his mustache, was a few feet below me in the barn. He shoved my tommy gun across the board floor of the hay locker.

"Martin told his men to make sure this got back to you," he said and turned away. As I crawled out, Algar walked to his desk at the center of the barn. There was daylight visible in the seam between the stone walls and the tin roof of the building. Sitting, Algar rested his face in his hands.

"How did they do?" I asked Algar.

He sighed. "Poorly. The Krauts pinned them down and then blasted the shit out of them at first light. The men who made it back came on foot."

"And Martin?"

"Gone," Algar said.

That was the same word Bettjer had used when I'd awoken at the Comtesse's after we blew the dump. I'd known it would happen. I reviewed in my mind what I'd been through--the terror of the jump, the shot, and the enduring indignity of fouling my trousers--only for Martin to have run from me again. Sisyphus came to mind.

"Any idea where he headed?" I asked.

I received another fixed uncomprehending look from Algar. So far all our conversations had somehow devolved into a competition in provoking speechlessness. The Lieutenant Colonel sighed deeply again.

"Well, if there's anything to your arrest order, Captain, he's probably headed to hell. Captain Dubin, you didn't understand me. Bob Martin is dead."

Chapter
17.

CHAMPS

Since December 16, Robert Martin had been in command of units that had been isolated from the
110
th Infantry Regiment during its retrea
t f
rom Skyline Drive in Luxembourg in the early hours of that day. Regrouping here with the remains of the regiment, Martin's two rifle companies and two towed guns from a tank destroyer battalion had been teamed with a platoon of M18 Hellcats. It was these troops Martin had led toward Vaux-lesRosieres, where the ammunition train was marooned. North and west of the town of Monty, they had crossed our lines and encountered thinly manned German positions, which they quickly pushed through.

Half a mile on, however, they were engaged by th
e
Panzer Lehr, the tank division formed from Nazi training units. Less brazen forces might have fallen back to form a stronger line, as McAuliffe and Algar had anticipated, but the Panzer Lehr prided themselves on backing off from no one and had spread out to take on Martin's team. During the protracted firelight that resulted, Martin and his men moved to the top of a knob, which allowed them to destroy a number of the German tanks. Near daybreak, the Panzer Lehr withdrew. Martin and his unit leaders had gone up to the second floor of a small lodge on the hill to assess whether they still had a chance to reach the ammunition train. From there, they saw what had provoked the Germans' retreat, a battalion of American tanks emerging like specters through the falling snow. Patton had arrived.

Even when the first rocket came screaming toward Martin from a turret of the approaching armor, no one in his command had caught on that the tanks they saw had been captured by the Nazis from the 9th Armored Division. Never mustering a defense, Martin's unit had been left with only isolated survivors. The Major himself had gone down when the initial tank shell flew in the window at which he stood. At least four other shells hit the building, reducing it to a bonfire.

All of this was related to me the morning after we jumped into Savy by a boy named Barnes. He was perhaps five foot two, and slight as a butterfly. Hi
s n
ose was dripping the entire time I spoke to him, and he flinched whenever a shell exploded in the distance. For the moment, the fighting seemed to he a couple of miles off, to the north and east.

"Captain, we was blown to shit, there just ain't no other way to put it. I mean, those was American tanks. How was we supposed to know any different?"

Algar had corralled this boy, and one of the few other survivors of Martin's team, Corporal Dale Edgeworthy, and the two of them sat with Biddy and me, on wooden chairs in a corner of the empty barn.

"Martin got it right at the start of the attack," said Edgeworthy. "That's what came over the radio. We all saw the building go, Captain. It was the only thing standing out there. Sort of looked like when you toss a melon out of a truck and it hits the road. Pieces everywhere. The tech sergeant had command after that. But that couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes. Soon on, Captain, it was just run like hell and scatter, run for your life. There wasn't any choice, sir, but to leave the dead and wounded behind."

Edgeworthy, a tall man close to thirty, began to cry then. He kept saying there wasn't any choice about running.

I was ready to dismiss them, when one more question occurred to me. I told myself not to ask, the
n d
id anyway. These men had been with Martin nearly a week.

"What about the woman? I heard there was a woman with Martin originally."

Barnes and Edgeworthy looked at each other.

"I don't know, Captain," said Barnes. "When the offensive started on the sixteenth, we was up near Marnach in Luxembourg. The first night, when Major Martin took over after Colonel Gordon got it, the Major led us around to this farmhouse after dark. There was three people there, this farmer and this round old doll and their daughter. Seemed like they knew Martin, at least I thought so, 'cause the Krauts was a pretty good bet to take that ground, but they was still letting us in, a few soldiers at a time, so we could warm up while we ate our rations. But that was just a couple of hours. The Krauts never stopped fighting that night. They had their tanks painted white to match the snow and bounced them klieg lights off the clouds and they come right up that hill. They've got all that territory now